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David Arquette plays ‘honest’ hero Sherlock Holmes

Actor known for Scream movies took stage role to challenge himself.

David Arquette has had a varied career that’s included everything from acting to being a World Championship Wrestling star, to singing in a rock band, to designing a line of clothing, to running a nightclub in L.A. And now he's tackling Sherlock Holmes onstage.

When you think of David Arquette playing someone with investigative skills, you’re more likely to summon up the bumbling Deputy Dewey Riley from the Scream series than the master sleuth of 221B Baker Street.

Still, that’s who Arquette will play in Toronto starting on Oct. 27 when he tackles the title role in Sherlock Holmes at the Ed Mirvish Theatre.

“I honestly never considered myself in the part,” laughs Arquette from California, where the show has been rehearsing. “I mean, me, Sherlock Holmes? Come on!”

He’s got a point. Arquette has had a varied career that’s included everything from acting to being a World Championship Wrestling star, to singing in a rock band, to designing a line of clothing, to running a nightclub in L.A. called Bootsy Bellows: his late mother’s stage name when she was a burlesque dancer.

But a deerstalker-clad, meerschaum-smoking Victorian sleuth? Hardly, my good man.

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“Look, he’s such a unique character,” reasons Arquette. “And he’s strangely contemporary. Look at how we’re obsessed with all these shows like CSI, all about forensics and profiling. That’s at the root of what Holmes does. And underneath all the surface stuff, he’s a strangely honest man and people like that in their heroes.”

Arquette has never really been known for stage work, although he did get great reviews for his 1999 turn as Dr. Frank N. Furter in a Los Angeles production of The Rocky Horror Show and starred opposite Annette Bening in a 2010 Hollywood mounting of The Female of the Species.

“I wanted to challenge myself,” is how he explains his return to live performance. “I love the interaction with audience. There’s something that brings me back to an older time and place.”

He might very well be referring to his highly colourful upbringing at the hands of two eccentric performers, Lewis Arquette and Brenda Olivia Nowak.

“Yeah, I was born on a commune in Virginia,” recalls Arquette. “It was super backwoods, our whole family lived in a one-room cabin. . . . It was tight. Unglamorous. Real poverty, man.”

He shared it with four brothers and sisters, all of whom have made their mark in show business.

David at 44 is the youngest, followed by Alexis, 46, a transgender woman who sometimes performs as Eva Destruction. Then comes Patricia (recent Oscar winner for Boyhood and star of CSI: Cyber) at 47, Richmond at 52 (last seen in National Lampoon Presents: Surf Party) and big sister Rosanna, 56, still best recalled for Desperately Seeking Susan opposite Madonna.

“My dad was my hero, a brilliant, complicated man who had his flaws,” Arquette says, but he has also chronicled his father’s substance abuse and his mother’s tendency toward violence.

He thinks some of his father’s difficulties might have stemmed from a complicated relationship with his own father, Cliff Arquette, known to fans of The Jack Paar Tonight Show and Hollywood Squares as country bumpkin Charlie Weaver.

Arquette got into movies early and by 21 was appearing in films like Buffy the Vampire Slayer, but making the first instalment of Scream in 1996 changed his life in a couple of important ways.

He got truly noticed for the first time as the feckless Dewey.

And he fell in love with his co-star, Courteney Cox, whom he married in 1999, separated from in 2010 and divorced in 2013.

Equally as tempestuous was his career with World Championship Wrestling, an adjunct to his 2000 film about the sport, Ready to Rumble.

“I started getting into scenarios I wasn’t ready for. I was even the world champion for a couple of weeks. How’s that for crazy? I had fun, I guess, but I’m glad I got out when I did.”

After that, issues with substance abuse began popping up until he finally checked himself into rehab in 2010, appearing on Oprah and Jay Leno’s Tonight Show in 2011 to discuss his recovery.

Two years later, he was on Howard Stern admitting he had relapsed.

He drifts into the subject by mentioning that the play “deals with Sherlock’s (drug) addiction in some of its darker moments.”

“Did you see that documentary about Amy Winehouse?” he asks. “There’s a great line at the end from Tony Bennett. He says, ‘If you stick around long enough, life teaches you how to live it.’

“But there’s a lot of figuring out how to do that. What works in life. How to find happiness. How to be a reliable and dependable partner. There is a lot of trial and error. A lot.”

“That break he gave me in Scream and all the mentoring he gave me afterwards were so important to my career.”

QUINCY JONES

“I really love his outlook on life. Wonderful father, incredible producer. His stories start, ‘When I was with John Coltrane . . .’ and go on from there.”

GARY SHANDLING

“I have the most respect for him. He mentors all these young writers and comedians and is very Buddha-like. Like the funniest therapy session ever.”

LEWIS ARQUETTE

“My father gave me so many opportunities, showed me so much, taught me so much. I’m forever grateful.”

ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

“Such an interesting character to me. We focus so much on the negative side of celebrity. She gave us an image of what it meant to be a kind and loving person in the world.”

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